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A museum (/mjuzim/; myoo-zee-um) is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of

artifacts and other objects of artistic,cultural, historical, or scientific importance and some public
museums makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or
temporary.[1] Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local
ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims,
ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public. The goal of
serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public.
Some of the most attended museums include the Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of
China in Beijing, the Smithsonian Institution inWashington, D.C., the British Museum in London,
the National Gallery in London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There are
many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums,
war museums and children's museums.
As of the 2010s, the continuing acceleration in the digitization of information, combined with the
increasing capacity of digital information storage, is causing the traditional model of museums
(i.e. as static bricks-and-mortar "collections of collections" of three-dimensional specimens and
artifacts) to expand to include virtual exhibits and high-resolution images of their collections that
patrons can peruse, study, and explore from any place with Internet. [citation needed] The city with the
largest number of museums is Mexico City with over 128 museums. According to The World
Museum Community, there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries. [2]
Contents
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1Etymology

2Purpose

3Most visited museums

4History
o

4.1Early museums

4.2Modern museums

5Management
5.1Exhibition histories

6Museum planning
6.1Financial uses of Museums

7Exhibition design

8Types

8.1Architectural museums

8.2Archaeology museums

8.3Art museums

8.4Biographical museums

8.5Car Museums

8.6Children's museums

8.7Design museums

8.8Diachronic versus synchronic

8.9Encyclopedic museums

8.10Ethnology or ethnographic museums

8.11Historic house museums

8.12History museums

8.13Living history museums

8.14Maritime museums

8.15Medical museums

8.16Memorial museums

8.17Military and war museums

8.18Mobile museums

8.19Natural history museums

8.20Open-air museums

8.21Pop-up museums

8.22Science museums

8.23Specialized museums

8.24Virtual museums

8.25Zoological parks and botanic gardens


9See also

10References

11Further reading

12External links

Etymology[edit]
The State Historical Museum inMoscow.

The English "museum" comes from the Latin word, and is pluralized as "museums" (or rarely,
"musea"). It is originally from the Ancient Greek (Mouseion), which denotes a place or
temple dedicated to the Muses (the patron divinities in Greek mythology of the arts), and hence a
building set apart for study and the arts,[3] especially the Musaeum (institute) for philosophy and
research at Alexandriaby Ptolemy I Soter about 280 BCE.[4] The first museum/library is
considered to be the one of Plato in Athens.[5] However, Pausanias gives another place called
"Museum," namely a small hill in Classical Athens opposite the Akropolis. The hill was called
Mouseion after Mousaious, a man who used to sing on the hill and died there of old age and was
subsequently buried there as well.[6]

Purpose[edit]
Open-air museum in Pribylina,Slovakia in 2009

The purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display items of artistic,
cultural, or scientific significance for the education of the public. The purpose can also depend on
one's point of view. To a family looking for entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, a trip to a local
history museum or large city art museum could be a fun, and enlightening way to spend the day.
To city leaders, a healthy museum community can be seen as a gauge of the economic health of
a city, and a way to increase the sophistication of its inhabitants. To a museum professional, a
museum might be seen as a way to educate the public about the museum's mission, such as
civil rights or environmentalism. Museums are, above all, storehouses of knowledge. In 1829,
James Smithson's bequest, that would fund theSmithsonian Institution, stated he wanted to
establish an institution "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge."[7]
Museums of natural history in the late 19th century exemplified the Victorian desire for
consumption and for order. Gathering all examples of each classification of a field of knowledge
for research and for display was the purpose. As American colleges grew in the 19th century,
they developed their own natural history collections for the use of their students. By the last
quarter of the 19th century, the scientific research in the universities was shifting toward
biological research on a cellular level, and cutting edge research moved from museums to
university laboratories.[8] While many large museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, are still

respected as research centers, research is no longer a main purpose of most museums. While
there is an ongoing debate about the purposes of interpretation of a museum's collection, there
has been a consistent mission to protect and preserve artifacts for future generations. Much
care, expertise, and expense is invested in preservation efforts to retard decomposition in aging
documents, artifacts, artworks, and buildings. All museums display objects that are important to a
culture. As historian Steven Conn writes, "To see the thing itself, with one's own eyes and in a
public place, surrounded by other people having some version of the same experience can be
enchanting.

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